


Her Boys

by Trogdor19



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Party, Rescue, Sick Character, Surfing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trogdor19/pseuds/Trogdor19
Summary: Some guy tries to drug Kiara during a kegger at the Boneyard, and her boys ride to the rescue, and then take her home and take beautiful care of her…which leads to a very unique first Jiara kiss.
Relationships: JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 161





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Trigger warning for a character unknowingly being given drugs and interrupted kidnapping. Absolutely no rape or non-consensual touching of any kind on the page. The violence warning is for the ensuing (super well deserved) fist fight. 
> 
> This happened in an expanded AU moment in S1, between when Sarah and John B got together, and when all the shit hit the fan with the gold and the finale.

Pope smiled at Abbi with-an-I, who was from the mainland. Well, Oklahoma, which was far enough from the ocean it deserved a different word than mainland, even though clearly it was both land and the main part of it.

Abbi smiled back.

He squeezed his red Solo cup until it popped a little. He didn’t have to just talk about science. He wasn’t even the regular kind of nerd, whose life was homework and Star Wars and nothing else. He surfed, and fished, and fixed boats, and rode dirt bikes, and everything else non-nerds did.

But he needed to think of _something_ to say, because Abbi seemed sweet and she was super cute—short and Japanese-American, if he had to guess. With shiny black hair and a tiny birthmark just beside her right eye that made her cheekbones seem even higher.

“So, have you and your family gone fishing since you’ve been here?” he ventured.

“Yeah…” She crinkled her nose. Damn, he’d clearly chosen the wrong topic. “It’s just so sad, those poor little fishies wriggling on the hook. I mean, I know I eat meat and all, it’s just so…sad.”

He nodded supportively and didn’t bring up her word repetition. Fishing was out. Surfing was good, girls liked surfing but there was really so little to say about it. Mostly whether you’d done well or poorly at it. This morning, he’d done pretty well. Not as good as JJ, and about half a world better than John B. So, standard. Kie was in a whole different league because she surfed like a girl, which was to say, beautifully.

He could say a thing or two about the break, but a girl from Oklahoma most likely wasn’t going to know enough about waves to care.

“We, uh, went to the beach,” she said.

“The beach is nice.” Pope smiled.

Abbi smiled.

Kie’s eyes met his over Abbi’s head and she made her squiggly-eyebrowed, how’s-it-going face from over by the giant driftwood log where she was talking to some tall guy with polo hair, and--as fate would have it--a polo shirt.

Pope didn’t want Abbi to notice he was sending signals to his friends about her, even his female friends, so he just gave a lukewarm smile and enough of a twitch of his shoulders that Kie would read it as a so-so.

Kie excused herself from Polo Guy and strolled on past, introducing herself smoothly to Abbi then asking Pope if he wanted another beer. That was code for did he want her to grab one of his ginger ales from the cooler in the van and bring it back in a red Solo cup. He nodded. It wasn’t that he was hiding that he didn’t drink, exactly. More that he didn’t want to have the keeping-my-signal-clear conversation thirty times in a night, with increasingly drunker people. Also, the Pogues needed a designated driver for the VW bus, and when it came to missing out on warm, foamy beer, he was the one who minded the least.

Kie pushed up on her toes and whispered in his ear, “Ask her if she wants to learn to surf. We can take her in the morning. And ixnay on the orpse-cay talk. Tell her I was asking about tampons to cover up the ear whispery stuff.” She patted his shoulder and moved off.

Pope put on a casual face he’d reconstructed from watching JJ lie to people and said, “That’s Kiara. Friends since we were kids.” The tampon cover made no sense since he wouldn’t _have_ any tampons for her to borrow, so he said, “She was telling me to watch out for that guy she’s with.”

“Really?” Abbi leaned in, apparently interested in this topic. “Like, watch out how?”

“Like…” Pope glanced at the guy in question, who’d broken into him and Kie’s conversation earlier with a question about a beach cleanup happening this weekend. There were fliers about it everywhere, but that opener had endeared him to Kie. His polo was in pale green, which was kind of a girl color in Pope’s opinion. The polo combined with his unfamiliar face meant he either went to the Kook Academy and didn’t come down to the Boneyard a lot, or he was a yacht club spring breaker.

He could never figure why the Kooks wanted to dress like a bunch of Easter eggs who played golf on horseback. JJ had several theories about it that Pope considered both offensive and probably inaccurate.

“She likes him, thinks he’s cute, but also there’s lurking douchebag potential. A lot of guys, you know…” Pope stalled out for a second, trying to think of what Kie would approve of as the least patriarchal vocabulary choice. “They just come here to find someone to…sleep with?” It came out more as a question because he had to make a last-minute call between that and “bang,” but Abbi seemed to recognize the truth of the statement immediately. Apparently, douchebags were also a thing in Oklahoma.

“Which guy?”

Pope kicked his chin toward Polo Shirt standing next to the driftwood log. He was tall, with dark hair in a suspiciously scrupulous cut and a soft, vaguely petulant jaw.

Abbi studied the guy. “Oh yeah.” In twisting to see behind herself, she’d ended up even closer to Pope, her shoulder brushing his chest as she whispered, “He could go either way. Preppy and kinda pretty, maybe nice, but also maybe…could be a dick.”

Pope nodded. Could be a dick. Now that he was really looking at the guy, he saw the potential, beach cleanup questions or not. That whole thing about keeping an eye out for Kie had been a cover, since they all pretty much kept one eye on her at parties automatically, but he made a mental note to be more alert tonight. Especially since JJ had been acting weird around her earlier and was now nowhere to be seen. John B was over with a rowdy group of surfers, trying to break pieces off an enormous driftwood log to make a bonfire. Sarah was grounded, mostly because her dad seemed to have a sixth sense for when there was going to be a kegger at the Boneyard.

Kie danced her way back through the party, somebody’s Bluetooth speaker really kicking ass on spreading the tunes. Pope had to admit there was something to be said for Kooks when it came to them having decently priced technology. When he was a forensic pathologist, he was never going to rely on the weak speaker of his phone to play music ever again.

Kie handed him off a red Solo cup of ginger ale along with a questioning smile. He winked back that things were going well with his maybe-date. Abbi beamed, assuming that meant he was affirming that he had an eye on the guy Kie was dancing her way back over to.

“It’s so sweet you watch out for her like that.”

Pope’s shoulders hunched from long reflex. “She doesn’t need it,” he said automatically. “Kie’s tough as hell. She’s from the Cut.”

Well, she technically lived on the edge of the Figure 8, but she surfed, swam, spit, and slummed like she was from the Cut, so he figured it counted. Like an honorary PhD. To translate this local colloquialism into mainlander-speak, he added a supporting source.

“She cold-cocked an armed drug dealer once.”

Abbi gasped. “Armed like he had a _gun_?”

Wait, had JJ taken the shotgun away before Kie hit Barry? Pope suddenly couldn’t remember, so he leapt for the truth—his refuge in times of trouble, and JJ’s last possible resort. “Doesn’t matter. At parties, with guys who’ve been drinking, I’d kinda rather be close just in case she ends up out of her weight class, you know? Some things you can’t take back.”

Abbi’s eyes softened and she stepped closer, laying her hand on his chest. “That’s…so true and like…I’m sorry, it’s just so nice to hear a guy _get_ this kind of stuff, you know?” Her dark eyes began to glitter with tears in the low, sunset light.

Crying seemed like a good sign but also potentially a bad one, so Pope panicked and blurted, “Want to go fishing?”

Her nose crinkled. “Fishing? I told you, I—”

“Surfing? I meant surfing. I could teach you to surf, in the morning. I mean, maybe you already know how to surf, I don’t want to assume—I wasn’t assuming—”

He looked to Kie as if she could rescue him from his own fumbling, but she was too far away and currently busy taking a picture for Gloria Kim and her new boyfriend. Behind her, Polo Shirt Guy crouched to where she’d set her cup in the sand. Maybe the cup had started to tip over, but Pope didn’t see if Polo Shirt Guy was only righting it, because just then Abbi said,

“No, that’d be great! I’ve always wanted to learn to surf.”

Pope froze. “Um, really? I mean, oh yeah! Great! Tomorrow. Kie and I were going to go in the morning. You can come with. I’ll bring an extra board.” John B’s was probably too long for a beginner, but there was a half-crumbling boogie board somewhere in the shed at the—

Kie staggered and Pope lost his train of thought. She’d just been standing, talking to Polo Guy after giving Gloria’s phone back, and then she listed sideways and nearly hit the driftwood log, spilling some of her drink in the process.

Pope’s stomach started to hurt. “Hey, let’s go over and see what time Kie wants to go. You guys should talk, anyway, she’s cool as hell.” And she could smooth over his fumbling before he could blow his follow-up date with the nicest tourist girl he’d met in ages.

“Sure!” Abbi said, and followed him over.

“Hey,” Pope said when he joined them. “So, Abbi’s going to come surfing with us in the morning and do you think it’s better to start her out with a boogie board or full surf board?”

Kie turned to him, her eyes wandering past his face then jerking back. She put out her hand to pat his arm and missed, saying, “I don’t—” And then she tipped right into Pope’s chest. He grabbed her, but she was dead weight and he overbalanced and he went down hard in the sand, Kie smashing his balls and knocking the air out of his stomach. He sputtered, tasting beer and ginger ale and not sure where their cups had ended up. Clearly not upright.

“Oh my God!” Abbi squeaked. “Are you okay? Here, let me go get my beach towel. You have beer pretty much just all over you.” She turned and dashed off and Pope shifted, spitting Kiara’s hair out of his mouth as he tried to get a good look at her. She was completely limp, fully unconscious and his heart _barked_. That was the only word he could think of for it, the painful jump and then his pulse racing so fast he went a little faint.

_Don’t panic. Don’t panic._

He shoved a hand under the waterfall of her hair, not even bothering to shift her off him before checking her pulse, and then having to hold his breath and close his eyes because he couldn’t tell if he could feel it or not over the freight train of his own. _Please please please please._ There it was. She wasn’t dead.

“Dude, she just went _down_ , wow. Guess she is a skinny little thing, so that beer hits hard.” Polo Guy bent down. “Here, let me help you.”

The pain was starting to seep through from the shot to the balls he’d taken. Pope ignored it, scrambling ungracefully out from under Kie’s body so he could lay her out on the sand and take a look at her.

“Did she hit her head?” he asked Polo Shirt.

Pope had seen her go sideways into that driftwood but she’d only seemed to bang her hip. Maybe she’d stumbled twice? Or gotten hit by a _car_ when she went to the van for his ginger ale? No, because she’d danced her whole way back. Maybe she’d taken another hit of JJ’s cousin’s Cripple, because they had a roach in the car from that blunt they couldn’t finish earlier… But that didn’t make sense either because Kie could smoke pretty much anybody under the table except JJ. A partial blunt wouldn’t put her out like this.

He checked her pulse again, pried her eyelid open to check her pupil, his breathing getting short when she didn’t stir at that invasive movement.

“She was hitting that keg pretty hard.” Polo Guy chuckled. “Little thing like that. Hey, it’s cool. I’ll give her a ride home. I hate to leave a passed-out girl at a party, you know?”

“No, it’s fine, we’ll take her,” Pope said distractedly, still running possible explanatory scenarios through his head.

“You’ve got that hot girl on the hook, man. Don’t blow that. I don’t mind, really. It’s kind of a thing of mine, rescuing damsels from parties. I believe girls should be safe, you know, even when they get a little too much drink on.” The guy chuckled again. Pope wondered what was funny.

And then he remembered Polo Guy kneeling next to Kie’s cup, when her back was to him taking the picture for Gloria. Her beer waiting in the sand because she didn’t let anybody hold it at parties except another Pogue.

Pope stood up.

The other guy was starting to kneel, reaching for Kie’s slack body. “I’ll just carry her to my car, it’s no trouble at all, I—”

Pope’s crashing pulse transformed in an instant into blinding heat and goosebumps that ripped down his whole body. His fists clenched and he felt like he could punch through a building. He stepped over Kie’s body, right into the other guy so he was forced to stand and stumble a step back to get out of Pope’s way.

“You’re not taking her home,” Pope said clearly.

Sand scattered as JJ jogged up. “Whoa, what’s Kie doing?” He stopped, looking between Pope and Polo Guy. “The fuck?”

JJ threw another look at Kie and stiffened.

“Kie?” He dropped to his knees and went for her pulse, tapped her cheek lightly. “Kie, what the hell? Pope, what’s going on?”

“This guy put something in her drink,” Pope said, his voice resonating so deep out of his chest he could barely recognize it. He could feel something rising in himself, dark and terrible and so huge he couldn’t even think around it. Couldn’t run odds or scenarios or consider consequences, but it didn’t matter because his subconscious had already run all the statistics and come up with the most probable solution. And his red-hot gut knew it was true. “The motherfucker drugged her.”

JJ came up off the ground like a torpedo, straight-arming said motherfucker back away from Kie.

“Whoa, JJ,” John B’s voice called from somewhere behind Pope. “Cool it, man. Somebody’s still on probation, remember?”

JJ stalked after Polo Guy, who had his hands raised and was talking fast. “Man, I got no problem with you. I don’t know what this fool is talking about. I was just talking to her and this black guy came and grabbed her and she like, fell over. I don’t know if he stuck a needle in her or what but she went down like a sack of bricks, man.” The stranger gave a shaky laugh.

“He drugged Kie,” Pope said again, his fingers shaking. He wanted to _kill_ that guy. Could imagine his neck already compacting under Pope’s hands and he was afraid to move because he was afraid of what he’d do. Remembered the blind rage of swinging that crowbar at Rafe’s back when he was choking Kie, and all those sleepless nights of wondering if he’d be living in prison right now if Rafe hadn’t knocked the crowbar out of his hands and forced him to switch to simple fists.

Pope liked to think he wouldn’t have gone all the way, but the truth was, even _he_ didn’t know.

“Oh fuck,” John B said. “Stay with Kie, Pope,” he ordered. “That guy might have friends.” And then he dashed across the sand, hitting a full sprint to join JJ.

Pope blinked, glad as hell John B had said that. He was so far gone he hadn’t even thought... She was totally helpless and that guy’s friends could come and swoop her right up when they were all distracted. He knelt, ashamed of himself for forgetting to care for her for even a second as he touched her cheek, checked her breathing. She was doing okay, for the moment. Yelling yanked his gaze back up.

“You like your women helpless, huh?” JJ’s voice was that deep, vicious cut that made the hairs on the back of Pope’s neck rise. “You like it when they can’t say no, motherfucker? Let’s see how you like it.” As Pope watched, he slapped the guy into a spin, grabbing his arms and wrenching them so hard behind his back that Polo Guy yelped. The main group at the party had turned away from the keg and was already starting to surge toward the fight to watch as JJ snarled, “Let’s see how he likes being helpless, John B.”

He didn’t have to ask twice.

_To be continued…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: This one is going to be a few chapters long, but in the meantime, I have an ongoing long Outer Banks fic called If Only The Gold, if you'd like to check it out!


	2. Chapter 2

_Previously, on this fic:_

_JJ snarled, “Let’s see how he likes being helpless, John B.”_

_He didn’t have to ask twice._

John B nailed the guy in the gut without hesitation, deep angry punches so hard they set Polo Guy and JJ staggering off balance as their friend held the guy for John B, not letting him fight back. Pope’s eyes widened as he watched from his post next to Kie’s unconscious body.

It wasn’t their usual M.O. Fair fights only at the Boneyard. You didn’t jump in unless the dude’s buddies did, even if he had you face down in the surf. JJ’s gun shot in the air was the only time they’d broken this rule, but Pope suspected roofying rapists were definitively immune to JJ’s sense of fair play.

The crowd had started to chant _Fight Fight Fight_ before JJ decided it was his turn and let the guy’s arms go, hurling him toward John B.

John B caught Polo Guy neatly, backhanding him across the face to spin him around, then catching him when he would have fallen and rebounding him back toward JJ. He didn’t even bother to hold him, because the douche was reeling so hard at this point there was no need.

Pope checked on Kie again, fighting the thrum of his blood that wanted so badly to run over there and take a shot of his own. _This was about Kie_ , he reminded himself. And if they didn’t take care of her, it didn’t matter whether that guy paid or not, it wouldn’t bring her back. He tipped her head back a little to keep her airway clear so her tongue wouldn’t fall to the back of her throat, shifted her leg so it was lying straighter. And when he looked back up, his fists clenched a little with each punch JJ landed.

He went after Polo Shirt with a wailing right hook that had his whole body weight behind it. The guy went down to a knee, staggered back up whimpering excuses and JJ took him out with a left.

“Wait wait wait,” the other dude was yelling as he crawled back up again. “She’s just drunk, man. I don’t even know the bitch—”

This time, Pope could see the blood fly as Polo Guy’s head snapped up off JJ’s plowing uppercut. He hit the sand damn near as hard as Kie had.

“Get up!” JJ shouted at him, and kicked him in the ribs. The guy did not get up.

Abbi ran up, a beach towel fluttering from her hands. “Oh my god, what happened? What’s going on? Is she okay?”

Pope couldn’t sort out what words he should be using to answer, and JJ was crouching now, yanking at Polo Guy in a way Pope couldn’t quite see through the thickening crowd of onlookers. He glanced at Kie one more time, then stood up and craned his neck so he could see better.

JJ stood, waving a pair of shorts and a red snippet of boxer shorts. “This is what happens when you bring roofies to the Cut,” he roared.

Pope’s eyes widened as the guy on the ground rolled into a ball, shielding his privates with his hands as his white ass flashed.

“This!” JJ waved the shorts, stalking down the beach. “Remember this if any one of you assholes thinks of ever bringing fucking date rape drugs to our beach. That shit _does not fly_ on our island.”

He hurled the shorts out to the sea and kicked a spray of sand up the asscrack of the writhing frat boy. Then stalked away toward Kie, the crowd parting to let him through as he shook blood off his knuckles.

John B knelt and fisted the pantsless guy’s hair in his hand, lifting his head and snarling something at him Pope couldn’t hear. Then he tossed him back to the ground and jogged after JJ.

“She’s okay,” Pope said, as soon as they were in range. “Still out.”

“We need to get her home.” JJ dug his wounded hands deep into the sand, leaving red smears behind as he tried to juggle her into his arms.

All Pope could do was swallow and nod.

#

Lifting Kie was like carrying a hundred pounds of wet spaghetti noodles. JJ tried to stand and her leg slipped off his hand and he tripped, going back to his knees.

“Help me,” he gritted out, not realizing how winded he was from the fight until he tried to speak. His hands were burning like he’d run them under the belt sander, but he shoved them deeper into the sand, trying to get a better grip on her. Then John B was there, coming in from the other side. His arms bumped JJ’s as they both crossed beneath her and this time when they lifted, JJ made it all the way up. Once his back was straight, she was light as anything but her limbs were so loose John B had to tuck her arm in between her chest and JJ’s so it wouldn’t fall out. Like it was a disembodied object, not something that belonged to her.

Nausea bolted up JJ’s throat. She was like a corpse. But Pope said she was okay and Pope was the smartest person he knew. He wouldn’t let Kie die.

JJ headed toward the parking lot, plowing people out of his way with a murderous glare when they didn’t part fast enough.

“I’ll get the van.” John B took off toward the lot.

A short black-haired chick was inexplicably hurrying after them with a beach towel. “Should I call an ambulance?” she asked Pope.

“No,” he said impatiently, matching JJ’s pace so he could keep an eye on Kiara’s face. He caught one of her flip flops when it started to fall.

JJ’s breath was sawing in his chest now and he gritted his teeth in annoyance, giving Kie a little toss in the air to hitch her higher into his arms.

“Am I still going to see you tomorrow?” the girl called after Pope, and neither one of them thought to answer because John B pulled up with the van and Pope wrenched the sticky side door open.

JJ stepped in, but he couldn’t maintain the crouch necessary to navigate its low ceiling with Kie’s weight dragging him forward. He missed the bench seat and collapsed onto the floor instead, barely twisting in time to take the impact with his own body instead of hers. His tailbone barked with pain and he felt a drop of his own blood hit his knee. He pushed his back up against the seat and gathered her legs away from the door.

“Should we take her to the hospital?” John B asked, the van rolling in little jerks as his foot jittered on the brake pedal.

Pope was googling with his free hand even as he closed the door. “This says once the drugs have taken effect, its often too late to pump the stomach. Mostly, patients are simply observed unless their breathing or pulse rate becomes depressed below critical thresholds. We need to monitor the vitals.”

Her head lolled back and he tucked it up against his shoulder, curling his arm tighter to support her neck.

“What the fuck did he do, hit her with a brick?” he growled.

“I should drive, you’re all drunk,” Pope remembered, looking up from his phone.

“Nah, I only had one beer,” John B said, popping it into gear. “I was too busy trying to start the bonfire to get back for a refill yet. Also, I don’t know how to monitor the vitals. Hers or anybody else’s.”

“Yeah, Pope, you’ve got to check her out,” JJ urged.

“I’m going to work on dead people, not live ones!” Pope protested, but he was googling again. “Okay, so pulse rate should be at…” He started mumbling to himself, flicking to a stopwatch app as his fingers rested against Kie’s neck.

JJ swiped some of her hair out of the way so Pope could get a better feel. “Pulse is good. A little fast, but that’s to be expected.”

Everybody in the van was holding their breath as Pope put his hand in front of her mouth to count hers.

“One breath per minute slower than normal,” Pope reported. He sat back on his heels, crammed in between the front seats and the sprawl of JJ and Kiara. “I don’t know, I feel like we should take her to the hospital to get checked out just in case. I mean, everybody knows listening to WebMD just screws you over.”

“Dude, and let her parents know she was at a party and drinking? With us? Do you want to ever see her again?” JJ threw him an incredulous look. “Nah, I’ve been on this shit. She’ll just sleep it off. If you say her vitals are vital or whatever, it’s probably fine. Doctors and cops just fuck everything up and she’ll spend half the night in a waiting room. We’ll take better care of her than those assholes would.”

“What do you mean you’ve been on this shit?” John B tossed a look back from the front seat. “I’ve seen you take some messed up stuff just to see what would happen, but this is a step beyond huffing Glade, my friend.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, dickbag. My cousin got ahold of a bunch of this stuff once and he obviously wasn’t gonna use it on girls, right? So he just had some fun with it. First time, I woke up with permanent marker all over me that took like a week to wash off.”

“Was that in fourth grade? I think I remember that now,” John B said.

“Your cousin roofied you in fourth grade?” Pope was staring.

“Yeah, I slept it right off, no big deal.” JJ looked down. Kie’s hair was everywhere and he worried he was pulling on it without her being able to feel it. He busied himself untucking it from under his arm and between their bodies.

The second time his cousin had roofied him, he woke up with his underpants on his head and all his favorite comic books in the toilet, which sucked. After that, he stopped eating anything that didn’t come out of a can he opened himself for like a year. He still remembered that awful, blank feeling of waking up and reaching back for the memories of how he got there, and finding just…nothing.

“I figure, Kie weighs what, like ten pounds more than fourth grade JJ? If I slept it off okay, she probably will, too. Kie’s tough.”

He couldn’t believe this was happening. And tonight, of all nights. He’d been telling himself for weeks he had to fucking talk to her. Sometimes she caught him looking at her, and no matter how fast he looked away, he knew she could tell. He’d flirted with her before, she’d shot him down before, but…something was different lately. Sometimes, he thought it was different for her, too.

Tonight was supposed to be the night. He’d made her laugh earlier and she cast this sideways glance at him that made his heart kick up like _oh holy shit, did she_ …. He almost wasn’t even scared to talk to her about it anymore, not after that look. And then that stupid guy with his stupid beach clean up question. Kie had smiled at him instead and JJ just couldn’t watch.

He should have watched. He should have stayed and fucking watched no matter how much he hated it, so she’d have been safe. He swallowed and glanced over at his friend. But then, Pope had been watching the whole time. Had caught things before they got out of hand. He felt a swell of gratitude toward their friend so large he wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he just coughed, trying to relieve the pressure on his chest.

Pope was on his phone again. “This says we should watch her in case she vomits and put her in the recovery position so she doesn’t choke on the vomit.” JJ watched while he typed in “recovery position.” His muscles were starting to ease a little. Pope was on the case, and he could always find a way to make a plan that worked.

“Okay, last chance,” John B said, pulling up to a stop sign. “Hospital or Chateau?”

“I think Chateau’s okay,” Pope agreed, and the van lurched back into motion. “This says in most cases—”

But JJ was no longer listening, because a sudden wetness was spreading.

“Oh fuck, she’s bleeding!” he yelped. “She’s bleeding she’s bleeding pull the fuck over John B I can’t fucking SEE where, Pope, get the fucking… _fuck_!” He was just shouting now, his hands running all over her, trying to find the wound. Pope punched the dome light on and John B screeched to a crooked halt halfway onto the shoulder. JJ’s hand paused in its frantic searching, and then he pulled away from Kie long enough to rip his shirt off, throwing it over the rapidly darkening denim of her shorts.

“Uh, did she just—” Pope said, staring at her lower half.

JJ gathered her back up in his arms, yanking at the shirt to cover her better. “Leave her alone!” he barked.

“Whoa, she totally pissed her pants, didn’t she?” John B was wide-eyed, going pale.

“No!” JJ lifted up under their combined weight and smacked the dome light off. “It happens, okay? Stop staring at her and fucking drive, asshole.”

“Sorry.” John B turned around. “She’s just like…way out, wow.”

“Way out,” JJ muttered, hunching over her and laying his hand over her neck so he could feel her heart beating against his palm. She was too much like a dead person right now, and he never wanted to know what it was like to hold a limp-as-death Kie. His fingers twitched against the urge to go back to the beach and throw that roofying asshole into the ocean after his shorts.

This is so not how he’d wanted this night to turn out.

The van was uneasily silent for the rest of the drive.

John B parked, gently, in front of the Chateau and Pope hopped out, getting the door.

“There are towels in the back,” John B said. “If you want to like, wrap her up so you don’t, um, you know.”

“It’s fine, let’s just get her inside.” JJ tucked his shirt over her wet shorts and kicked his legs out the door, lifting both of them to standing and carrying her into the Chateau. Her head was heavy, but it felt good on his shoulder and when the other guys weren’t looking, he squeezed her a little tighter into himself, letting the weight of her calm his raging heartbeat a little.

He turned toward the pullout bed but John B blocked him. “No, dude, don’t put her on there. I only have the one set of sheets for it and I just washed them.”

“So where am I supposed to put her, dickhead, in the yard?”

“On the floor, or maybe the bathtub? Just until we can get her cleaned up.”

JJ paused at that. “Oh. Um…”

“Yeah, we can’t really leave her like that all night,” Pope said. “Don’t babies get some kind of rash if—”

“Shut up, Pope,” JJ snarled.

“Right, yes, shutting up. Great call.”

JJ dropped to one knee, the hardwood floor grinding against his kneecap while he grunted at the effort of trying to lower her slowly all the way down. Pope jumped in belatedly and caught her shoulders, helping JJ ease her head down so it didn’t thump against the hard surface. JJ pulled his stained, crumpled shirt away from her and tossed it away.

John B touched his shoulder. “It’s us or nobody, man. Not like she’d thank us for calling her mom.”

“I know that,” JJ snapped. He blew out a breath. “Okay, yeah. Fine.”

“So uh, how do we do this?” John B shifted from foot to foot, picking at the torn skin on his knuckles.

“We should close our eyes,” Pope suggested.

“Right, yes. On three?” John B crouched down with them, and counted it off. JJ snapped his eyes closed, but that felt even weirder because then he had to sort of feel his way up the outside of Kie’s leg to her waistband. Once he got there, he bumped into Pope’s hand—or maybe John B’s. He couldn’t feel the difference right now.

“I’ve got it,” he muttered. “Help me lift her up.” Pope and John B both fumbled, trying to kind of lift her but she was so limp it was almost a lost cause. JJ did what had to be done quick and clinically, jerking at the sides of her wet shorts, his stomach twisting.

He worked the soggy shorts and underwear off over her now-bare feet and tossed them aside, then froze. “Fuck. We can’t open our eyes. She’s like—"

“We should have gotten a blanket or a towel or something first.” Pope groaned. “Kie’s gonna murder us when she wakes up.”

JJ was privately of the opinion that she probably should murder all three of them for not being there the one fucking time she actually needed them to have her back, but they had other problems to deal with at the moment.

“John B, do you—” he started to say, just as John B said, “There’s a blanket on the couch. At least, there’s pretty much always a blanket on the couch. I’ll get it.”

JJ tensed, his fists pressing into his legs. “If you open your eyes, I swear to God I’ll punch them back shut.”

“I’m not going to open my eyes! Jesus, JJ, what do you think I am, some piece of shit Kook?” John B sounded wounded, then he made an _oomph_ sound as one of his knees smacked JJ.

JJ swatted him away. “Yeah, nice ‘accident’ asshole.”

“I just tripped over Kie,” John B said sheepishly. “Do you think she felt it?”

“My stomach hurts,” Pope said.

“You didn’t even drink anything!” JJ said, swinging to shove the other guy’s shoulder but just hitting air because apparently Pope was further away than he thought.

A beer can chattered across the floor, and John B cursed. Then there was a bang and a squeak and he cursed louder. “I got it!”

“Congratulations. Your medal’s in the mail,” JJ snapped. “Get over here and cover her up already.”

“JJ,” Pope said quietly, and then his questing hand bumped JJ’s ear, dropped to his shoulder and squeezed.

“Sorry,” JJ muttered. He knew he was being a dick. “I’m just—”

“I know. Me, too,” Pope said. “I was right there, watching her talk to the guy. I should have figured it out faster.” He sounded miserable, and JJ felt a little guilty.

“Hey, man, if you didn’t see him put the drugs in there, how could you have known?”

“Is that you, JJ?” Fingers brushed the back of his hair.

“Well, it ain’t Beyonce.” JJ reached back and caught John B’s wrist. “Hand me the blanket. I’ll put it over her.”

Fabric nudged his arm and he grabbed the blanket.

“I’m staying here until it’s safe to open our eyes,” John B declared, the hint of a whine in his tone. “I think I hit every fucking piece of furniture I own with my shins doing that, and I didn’t even think I _had_ that much furniture.”

JJ reached out, feeling with the back of his hand because that felt less personal. When his scraped knuckles touched warm skin, he flipped the blanket out, feeling through it until he could be sure it had made it all the way across both legs. Warily, he opened one eye just a crack to check, and she was covered, the blanket slung all the way up her torso and over one arm. He adjusted it so it covered her whole body, in case maybe she was cold, then said, “All clear.”

John B collapsed next to him, their shoulders bumping. “Thank God. That sucked.”

“Uh, you guys…” Pope’s eyes were darting back and forth.

“Have you ever noticed that when he gets that tone, it’s never good news?”

“You know, John B, I had noticed something like that. Do you think tonight, since it has been a complete Category IV storm of shit, he might cut us a break on the no bueno newsas?”

“No, I do not, JJ. Also, that is not Spanish.”

“It’s Spanish enough, douchebag. Like you know the difference.”

“Obviously I do, or I wouldn’t have—”

“Uh, guys…”

“Yes, Pope.” John B swept out a hand. “You have the floor. Well, except for the part of it we’re all sitting on.”

“She’s like, sort of, kind of got pee all over her still. We should like…” He paused for a long time while they all stared down at their fallen friend. “Wash her off, or clean her somehow. Maybe we can get her into the shower, and pull the curtain closed and just turn it on?”

“But then we’d have to take her top off,” John B said, pained.

“No, dude,” JJ said. “I don’t…” He swallowed. “Yeah, no. I don’t think we can do that. That’s not cool.”

“Yeah, fuck no,” John B agreed. “I’m pretty sure I’m 40% douchebag now just from getting her out of the wet shorts. When she wakes up, we need to have her tell us what she would want us to do, like if this ever happens again.”

“This can _never_ ,” Pope said, voice trembling, “happen again.”

JJ reached over and clapped his shoulder. “Amen, brother. I will kill a man.”

“We need more female friends,” John B said. “If we had—oh shit, we should call Sarah!”

“She’s super grounded, bro. And her dad’s a murderer who hates you.”

“Yeah, but if she knew Kie needed her, she’d find a way to sneak out, I know she would. This is an emergency. I’m going to call her.”

John B pulled out his phone to call Sarah and JJ tuned him out, chewing the inside of his lip and looking down at her. He’d seen Kie sleep tons of times, but she’d never looked like this. Her face was…empty somehow. Like she wasn’t in there, holding it into its right shape and her features sagged and looked all wrong. Like there was something essential missing.

He gritted his teeth. He didn’t believe in God, or at least one that didn’t like fucking with people. But if there was a God, just in case, he sent up a quick prayer that Kie would wake up still herself, and okay.

If he could have that, he’d never ask for more, never even try to talk to her about if she might ever feel…no, that didn’t matter. All he needed was her to be awake and herself and his friend again. If this maybe-hopefully-God would grant that, JJ would give up all his fantasies of telling her how he felt, of her kissing him, smiling at him in that way. It was the biggest sacrifice he could think to make. Wasn’t like he had anything else to offer up.

“She’s going to be okay, right?” Pope whispered, shredding his cuticles. “You took this same stuff as a kid, right, and you were fine. You’re fine!”

JJ wasn’t totally sure if there was more than one kind of roofy drugs but he found himself nodding emphatically. “No, for sure. She’ll just be sleepy. It’ll be okay. And if you get worried, we’ll go to the hospital. Fuck her parents, right?”

“Right,” said Pope, and went right back to WebMD, chewing on his thumbnail.

JJ didn’t like Kie’s head just lying there on the wood floor, and he needed to _do_ something. He scooted over and lifted her head until it was cushioned in his lap, smoothing one of her tiny little braids between his fingers. It was something she let him do sometimes when they were laying around in the hammock, or on the boat, and it soothed him. Like the tiny bumps of the braid between his fingers helped him not feel so twitchy.

Pope googled.

John B sat in the corner and cracked open a beer, taking big foamy gulps and letting his head hang exhaustedly on his neck in between.

Sarah, as it turned out, was a pro at sneaking out of her house, and she was at the Chateau in less than fifteen minutes flat. She swept in through the door and tossed her keys on an old blown out speaker.

“Okay, where is—wow, the floor, guys, really?”

“I did mention the whole pee issue, right?” John B said, but Sarah ignored him, dropping to her knees next to JJ.

“Damn, Kie,” she murmured, her hair brushing Kie’s shoulder as she bent and touched her friend’s forehead, and then her neck. “How long has she been like this?”

“Hours,” JJ said.

“Forty-two minutes,” Pope said.

Sarah glanced between the two of them, but didn’t comment. “I’m going to need some dry clothes for her, and hot soapy water. A towel, probably. Also, seriously guys? It’s like 90 degrees in here. You’re going to give her heat stroke.” She grabbed the blanket.

“Don’t!” JJ caught her wrist but she was already mid-movement and the edge of the blanket fluttered to show an expanse of bare leg. Sarah’s face changed.

“Guys. Why the _fuck_ is she not wearing pants?”

JJ’s jaw set, twitched. “They were soaked. We had to take them off.”

“We closed our eyes!” Pope yelped.

John B nodded. “We did. And we didn’t think to get a blanket to cover her first, and JJ wouldn’t let me open my eyes to go get one, and I banged my shins on pretty much everything. Here, you can see the bruises.” He jumped up, gesturing to his hairy shins.

Pope looked miserable. “We didn’t—we shouldn’t—we should have thought to call you right away. We were just trying…well, you know. We couldn’t _leave_ her like that.”

Sarah’s eyes flicked between all of them and then her mouth quirked up a little. “She’s lucky to have you guys,” she said gently. “You know that?”

JJ hung his head lower.

“Okay,” Sarah said, flicking her fingers at JJ. “Scram. I need some privacy and some supplies.”

JJ tensed. This was the whole reason they’d called Sarah, but he didn’t like one bit of leaving Kie here on the floor with the Kook girl who’d once ditched her for other people. What if her breathing slowed and Sarah was busy and didn’t notice? Not that he didn’t like Sarah—she’d been pretty fucking loyal to John B so far, for a rich girl. But just…he wasn’t real sure he was going to be able to let Kie out of his sight for a while yet without the idea making him want to chew glass.

And spit all that glass back out right in the face of that Polo-shirt-wearing, girl-drugging ass—

“JJ!” Sarah snapped her fingers in front of his face. “English still your first language? Vamoose.”

“Pretty sure vamoose isn’t English,” he muttered. “I need a pillow, first.”

Pope snatched one off the couch and tossed it to him. JJ eased away from Kie, cupping the back of her head in his hand as he transferred it from his leg to the pillow, then arranged all her hair so she wasn’t accidentally laying on any of it and pulling it out by the roots when she couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t figure how much time she must spend automatically managing her hair when she was awake, because since she’d been passed out, it’d been tangling with just about everything.

He felt Sarah’s gaze on him, the way every poor kid learned to detect the itch of eyes following them at a young age. He glared at her without thinking.

“JJ,” John B warned, setting a bucket of soapy water next to Sarah and handing her a cloth and an ancient pair of dishwashing gloves.

“JJ, you’re all wet,” Sarah said. “Is that…” Her expression changed again as she put two and two together and she turned on John B. “Seriously? You guys are just letting him run around totally covered in piss?” She gestured. “Get out of those shorts. Now.”

Her voice was brusque but her eyes were kind and JJ shrugged, shucking out of his shorts and kicking them toward the corner where he’d tossed Kie’s. She was looking too still again, so he knelt and touched her neck, counting the heartbeats even though he wasn’t sure of the number Pope was using to measure them.

Sarah cleared her throat. “Can somebody get him some pants, please?”

She had her eyes averted and JJ glanced down. He was pretty much down to boxers and boots, and Sarah wasn’t a real Pogue, used to all changing into the back of the van together with their heads barely turned, swimming together, and barely wearing anything at all in the summer when the humidity really kicked in.

JJ went to John B’s room and whipped on a pair of shorts, buttoning them as he came back out. Something about the distaste in her face when she’d said he was all wet was digging at his stomach.

“We can’t tell her,” he said abruptly. He looked around, making eye contact with each of his friends. “Look, she can never know she wet herself. She’ll be so embarrassed. Sarah, we’ll just tell her after she got drugged you came over to change her so she could sleep.”

“Why would I do that? She sleeps in her clothes all the time.”

“She…got beer on her shorts.” JJ grabbed up his clothes and Kie’s shorts, tossed them into the sink, swiped John B’s beer out of his hand, and emptied the dregs over the already-wet clothes. “There, see?”

“Uh, or you could have _washed_ them,” Sarah said.

“They had piss all over them,” John B said.

“You afraid of a little piss, Vlad?” Sarah said, dropping into an accent. “You are not the man I thought you were.”

“Ah, Val, but we did rescue the damsel,” he said back in the same terrible accent, a hint of a bashful smile coming back into his eyes.

“Uh, we can also never tell Kie you called her a damsel,” Pope said.

Sarah laughed. “You three make the fear of Kie look like it puts the fear of God to shame.”

“Second place at best.”

“ _Distant_ second.”

“Out, already!”

“We’re going.” JJ pulled his vape pen out of his pocket and paused. “You’re not going to tell her, though, right?”

“You have to promise,” Pope said anxiously.

“Okay, but it’s not something she should be ashamed of. You get that, right? It’s the guy who should be ashamed.”

“Oh right,” John B said. “And if you pissed your pants in front of all your friends, you’d be fine, right?”

She held up her hands. “Okay, okay.”

JJ was still hesitating by the door. He felt like there was more he should do, but wasn’t sure what. “Hey, Sarah…”

“I know,” she said. “I got her, okay?” She came over and slung an arm around his neck, standing on her toes to pull him into a hug.

His brows bounced up and he patted her back. He and Sarah really weren’t the hugging kind of friends. “Uh, thanks? What was that for?”

“For not caring that your shorts were wet.” It seemed to him she was blinking a lot as she pulled away, but JJ popped his vape pen into his mouth and stepped out onto the screened porch before he had to think too much about that.


	3. Chapter 3

Once all the boys were outside on the porch, Pope gestured for a hit off JJ’s vape pen and huffed it like it was an inhaler.

JJ nodded. “Right, man? That kinda night.” He punched John B lightly in the shoulder. “Your girlfriend’s not half bad, man.”

“Not half,” said John B, glancing back toward the house with that warmth coming back into his eyes.

It only took Sarah a few minutes before she was back on the porch, pulling off her dishwashing gloves. “Your girl’s all set.”

JJ bumped her with his shoulder in his hurry to get back in, mumbling an apology without slowing. Kie was still laid out on the floor, now wearing John B’s basketball shorts since they were the only ones with a drawstring to make them tight enough to fit, and one of JJ’s Pelican Marina shirts. He had like a million of them that he got for free every time he got a new job at the marina—filling scuba tanks, busing tables, fixing boats, building the new dock after the last storm. Somehow, his shirt looked so much bigger on Kie.

“Okay, who needs doctoring next?” Sarah said brightly. She grabbed John B’s face and tilted it to the light, her brow crinkling a little bit when she saw no bruises. “Huh. Let me see your hands.”

He held them out for her and her thumb dabbed at the blood on his knuckles. “That’s what I thought. Guess that means you caught the guy who did it. JJ, yours too.”

“They’re fine, ma,” he drawled, stuffing his vape pen back in his pocket.

“I’m betting they’re not, and that you scraped them open on the kind of guy who roofies and rapes girls.” She folded her arms. “Syphilis sound good to you? How about HIV?”

His shoulders slumped.

“That’s what I thought. Now get me the first aid kit,” Sarah said. John B traipsed off and she turned. “Pope, let me see your hands.”

His face fell. “They told me to stay with her. I would have helped. I wanted to—”

“That was smart,” Sarah said. “Glad one of you testosterone-poisoned boys managed to remember what you were really fighting to protect, instead of leaving a passed out girl alone at a party just so you could get a few swings in.”

She nabbed JJ by the wrist and towed him toward the sink, stealing a bottle of rubbing alcohol from John B as he came back in. JJ threw John B a pleading look and John B gave him the you’re-on-your-own face, which was not JJ’s favorite face.

Especially not when Sarah dumped straight up alcohol on his sand-encrusted, shredded knuckles.

“Jesus Christ on a catfish’s dirty uncle!” he howled.

“This is making me feel a lot better about getting stuck in the babysitter position,” Pope said conversationally, propping his hip on the stove and watching JJ’s torture with some interest.

Sarah started rubbing at his knuckles vigorously and JJ leapt backwards, trying to pull his hands away but she dug her foot hard against the floor and held her ground, giving him a challenging arched eyebrow. He glared.

“John B, your damn girlfriend’s trying to kill me.”

“She likes the rubbing alcohol a little too much,” John B agreed.

Sarah dragged JJ back to the sink. “What did you do, dig the grave for that guy with your bare hands after you beat him up? You’re a mess, JJ. Like, even more than normal.”

“Had to get Kie,” he muttered, but gritted his teeth and submitted to the rest of her scrubbing the sand out of his wounds. He’d had infected ones before and they burned for even longer.

“Kie didn’t even twitch,” John B said, glancing back into the living room. “When you yelled like that. Those are _some_ drugs that guy gave her.”

“JJ, God.” Sarah hissed in a breath as she frowned at the depth of the scrapes. “Did you have to keep going until you hit bone? This is bad. Like, I’m not totally sure you don’t need stitches.”

“Can you even get stitches on your knuckles?” John B had come up beside Sarah and his fingers stroked down her back while he winced and watched her clean out JJ’s wounds.

JJ glanced at the other room. “Can we be done now?”

“Germ theory of disease says…no dice.” Sarah scrubbed harder. There was a grunt from the other room and JJ yanked his hand away, turning that direction until John B caught his shoulder to stop his retreat.

“It’s just Pope, it’s okay.”

Pope was struggling back to his feet with a limp bundle of Kiara in his arms, her foot swinging. He nearly lost his balance and JJ darted forward, but Pope rallied. “I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ve got her.” He carried her to the pullout couch and laid her in the center. 

John B tugged JJ back into the kitchen so Sarah could finish with him. 

“Mine are fine,” John B claimed when JJ finally escaped. “Like a scratch. Kittens have done worse.” 

Sarah snatched up his hand and turned on the faucet again, shoving JJ and Kie’s soaked clothes to the side. “If you cry too loudly, I’ll get you a teddy bear.”

JJ glanced back long enough to see John B drop his head to her shoulder while she worked on his knuckles. “Can you be my teddy bear?” John B murmured to her.

JJ made a gagging sound. “Do you even hear yourself, man?” 

“Just wait,” John B said. “When it happens to you, I’m going to make so much fun of you.”

JJ looked away. Before tonight, he’d been hoping that might be him and Kie, soon. Somehow, that seemed even more impossible right now.

He went out to the pullout couch, where Pope was perched nervously, rubbing his shoulder while watching a sleeping, sprawled Kiara.

“You said we were supposed to put her in some position,” JJ said. “In case she throws up.”

“Recovery position, right!” Pope pulled out his phone. “Recovery position involves placing the patient on their—”

“I got this.” Sarah emerged from the kitchen with a freshly-bandaged John B trailing behind. “I was a lifeguard for two summers. Lots of first aid. We need to get her on her side.”

JJ scooped his hands under Kie’s back, turning her and then lifting and tugging according to Sarah’s directions. He flicked a glance or two at the Kook girl as she worked. She touched Kie gently, even now, not like she was some kind of inanimate object. She touched her like she cared, and he wondered how close the two girls were, now that they’d come back together this year. Sarah finished arranging Kie’s arm to support her head and JJ laid her head back down, scooping her hair down her back. 

Sarah grunted, trying to bend Kiara’s knee so it would prop her up on her side. But no matter how she arranged or tugged, Kie kept rolling loosely onto her back. 

“We could prop her up with pillows,” Pope suggested. 

“But then if we’re all asleep and she rolled on her back on top of the pillows, what good would that do?”

“I’ve got her,” JJ said. He climbed onto the bed and scooted in behind Kie, lifting her until she was on her side and let her weight come into him, supporting her all the way down his body. “It’s okay.”

Sarah watched him. “Have you known her a long time?”

“Junior high, maybe?” He tried to think of when Kiara had gone from a pretty girl on the beach to one of them. He remembered her daring him to out-fish her. Beating him. Wasn’t sure how long after that she’d become a fixture on the HMS Pogue, just remembered how she made John B laugh louder than all of them could, and how it twinged in his stomach and he was never sure if he loved it or hated it. “Years.” He tucked back a strand of her hair that was tickling his nose. “Not long enough.”

Sarah went back to the kitchen and washed their clothes in the sink, hanging them out on the porch to dry. John B got her a soda and Pope settled in on the other side of Kie, laying very still but his eyes so wide JJ could see the whites around his irises.

Her hair smelled like coconut and sharp citrus. JJ wasn’t sure where to put his hand, so he rested it over her shoulder. That seemed more respectful, somehow, than putting it over her waist. With her body relaxed back into his, the Chateau quiet and Windows dark, it almost seemed like a sleepover. Like she might just wake back up anytime and flick him in the nose and tell him he had beer breath. And if he laid there long enough, she might start playing with his hair, braiding the longest bits until his lashes started to droop. Those were his favorite moments.

“Do you think she’s dreaming?” Pope whispered. 

“No.” JJ shook his head. “She’s kind of…nowhere.” He remembered how the blankness felt on the other side, but being in it…there was no being in it. The memories didn’t stick, if they were ever formed at all. 

His hand slipped down her waist, then, flattening over her sternum. He hoped she knew they’d brought her home. That she sensed them there, waiting for her. 

“Need anything before I go to bed?” Sarah whispered. “I’m going to sleep over.” Her hand was linked with John B’s as they stood in the shadowy doorway to the kitchen. 

“Thank you,” Pope said. “Thank you for doing all this.”

“She’s my friend, too.” Sarah headed for the bedroom, but John B lingered, their linked hands tugging as he glanced back to the pullout couch. Sarah laughed softly and gave him a push. “Go on. Go play guard dog, like I know you’re dying to. I’ll take your bed.”

He threw her a hangdog look. “I’ll be in after a while, okay?” 

She shook her head, a funny smile on her face that JJ couldn’t read. It made him uncomfortable, somehow, but not worried. 

“No,” she said. “You’re where you need to be.” She kissed John B on the cheek and disappeared into the bedroom. The pullout couch was full even by Pogue standards, so John B settled on the floor at their feet, tugging over the sheet so it covered Kie’s bare legs, and one of JJ’s, too. 

“Wake me if she wakes up,” John B said, because he slept like the dead.

JJ nodded, even though John B couldn’t probably see it. He was distracted by the kink in his chest that still hadn’t gone away. Not after he demolished that guy on the beach. Not after they got her home. Not after she was all cleaned up and laid safe in bed with Pope watching out for her. 

He’d always known he liked Kie. Hell, he’d even been planning on telling her he had feelings for her. Real, serious, not just-flirty feelings. She was all the best things about guys and girls. She’d try to surf the craziest break, race dirt bikes with him, but she was still pretty and sweet smelling and liked to wear dresses and braid her hair up into elaborate things that she needed him to hold while she pinned them. She’d bust your balls and knew when you needed someone to make you breakfast. She was still the first to hug John B when he was sad, the first to realize Pope needed to be pulled out of a finals-test-anxiety-tailspin.

It’s not that he didn’t know he cared about her, or that he liked her company. She was a Pogue, and there was just…no off switch in him when it came to the Pogues. He’d do anything. Wouldn’t think, wouldn’t consider if he’d live through it. Like when he’d ripped that shotgun out of Cokehead Barry’s hands, or stolen the Phantom. Didn’t matter. If it was a Pogue on the line, he’d do anything.

She was a Pogue, so of course he loved her. And he was well fucking aware that he wanted her. 

But he’d never known how much he _needed_ Kie to be okay until she wasn’t.

“She’ll be okay,” he murmured. “She has to be, right?”

Pope looked up. Anxious, pessimistic, worry wort Pope. He nodded firmly. “She will.”

John B just squeezed his foot, his fluffy hair drifting in the wash of air from the ceiling fan and tickling JJ’s toes.

It should have been messed up. The situation, the vibe, the everything. But somehow, once all four of them were together on the pullout, JJ’s eyelids started to sag, and the shadows on the Chateau’s splintery ceiling looked friendlier. Even Kie’s breaths seemed to get a little longer, a little smoother. And with all her weight leaning into his chest, he fell deeply, solidly asleep.

#

Kiara woke up with the whole backside of her body hot, her frontside cold, and her mouth tasting like crusty socks. Pope was sleeping on his phone in front of her, his nose creased oddly by the screen and his head half propped up on an old floral pillowcase she recognized as one of John B’s.

She felt bad. Where’s-the-toilet bad. What-did-I-hit-with-my-car bad.

She dragged herself up, sagging back against a hand, and the heat all along her back abated, leaving her feel almost chilled.

JJ’s familiar fistful of wrecked blonde hair dented the pillow just behind hers. He was wearing one of John B’s old Green Day shirts, his shoulders curled in a way that whispered _pain_. Something in her stirred awake and that’s when she recognized the looseness.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. She glanced down to find JJ’s Pelican Marina shirt and somebody’s knee-length basketball shorts. “What the hell?”

Pope startled upright. “Oh my God, Kie!”

She flapped the shirt in front of her. “Did I throw up on myself? Was I wasted last night?”

“Listen, nothing happened—” Pope began and her eyes narrowed. Clearly something had happened.

She looked to JJ.

“You got roofied.” JJ sat up. 

“ _What_?”

She couldn’t process that word. It meant too many things and they’d happened, apparently, to her. 

She stumbled off the couch, tripping over a slumped John B. He coughed and threw a hand over his head, his lucky bandana knotted around his wrist again.

“John B!” she yelped. “Wake up, what the fuck?”

He raised his head and blinked. Then leapt unevenly to his feet. “Kie! Shit, you’re okay!” He buried her in a hug. She dug her chin into his shoulder, pushing hard so her lip wouldn’t tremble.

“Am…Am I?”

JJ looked…not well. He took a swipe at his hair, then crossed both arms over his belly.

“You’re okay, you’re—” John B pulled back to look at her, then paled. “No, hey. Nothing happened. Pope saw that guy messing with your drink, you stumbled, and then Pope came over to check on you and you passed the fuck out.”

“I tried to catch you,” Pope put in. “We kinda fell, though.”

“So he didn’t—it was before—” Not enough breath was coming out with her words and she clutched at her throat, backing away from John B so she’d have more space to breathe. 

“It was before,” JJ said. “Or we wouldn’t have let him live.”

“You’re sure? Because I don’t remember anything.”

John B stuffed his hands in his pockets and Pope’s eyes went wide. He shook his head very emphatically no. 

She glared at all of them in turn. “You’re not lying so I won’t feel bad?” When she saw their expressions she clenched her teeth. “So he did rape me, then.”

“You peed yourself,” Pope blurted, and JJ smacked him. 

“So much for taking it to your grave, asshole.”

“So you…” She swept a hand down her shirt, which belonged to him. Which did not have a bra under it. 

“We called Sarah to clean you up,” John B said. There was a lot of nodding.

She looked around at the three boys, weirdly betrayed that Sarah had seen her that way. So out of control of herself. 

“You see me naked all the time—the billion times I’ve peed off the boat, skinnydipping at the cove, naked surfing day, the one time I went cliff-jumping and lost my top…”

JJ raised a finger. “Still the best day of my life.”

“You’re disgusting.” She ignored him. “But like, you all know me, but last night suddenly you’ve got to call _Sarah_ to take care of me?” It was wrong to feel humiliated, wrong to feel like suddenly she wasn't a Pogue, that she was a “girl” and on the opposite team on the one morning when suddenly, she very much wanted to be on her normal team, with her guys and no one else knowing her deepest and darkest. But there it was. It’s how she really felt.

JJ looked…poisonous. But he didn’t meet her eyes.

John B scuffed a peeling-toed sneaker against the floor. “You didn’t see you, Kie. You were like a dead person.”

“It was wrong,” Pope said solemnly. “We couldn’t. Not when you were like that.”

Their hangdog faces gave her a sudden flash of what they must have looked like last night, panicked and uncertain. Her Pogues, all gathered around her. They’d stayed all night, she realized. Sleeping in a protective circle all around her, John B at their feet.

She sighed and flopped back on the bed, holding out her arms. “Okay, okay, come here already.” They all piled on top of her, John B diving in first, JJ hugging the tightest. She squeezed them back until her ribs ached. “I’d kill for you little assholes, you know that?”

Pope was taking big, shaky breaths.

Sarah came out of the bedroom, her hands lost inside the dangling sleeves of one of John B’s hoodies. “Hey…” She came over and hitched herself onto the bed, threading under all the arms instead of joining the dog pile. She kissed Kie’s forehead.

“Welcome back, girl.”

When they finally let her go, Kie stood up off the pullout, leaning back down to Pope so she can kiss his cheek. “Thank you for watching for me.”

“Hey!” John B bounded up, stumbling as his foot caught in knotted sheets. “We beat up the guy. Where’s my kiss?”

“Oh, do you feel left out, John B? Do you need to be the center of attention?” She beckoned, grinning devilishly. “C’mere, my sweet little baby.”

His face darkened with suspicion. “No, I just—”

He backed away, but she caught his face in both hands, pushing up onto her toes…before giving his cheekbone a long, solid lick. He yelped and dug his fingers into her sides, tickling her as she tried to dance away. She slapped at his hands, giving him laughing warning eyes, then turned to JJ.

“Maybank,” she said sternly. “Hands. Let’s see them.”

He drew away, scrubbing at the back of his neck as his arm flexed. “Why am I in trouble?”

“Because if John B took on that guy, something tells me you weren’t standing on the sidelines, saying your rosary.” She held out her hands and wiggled her fingers. “Let’s see them.”

“It’s kind of cute,” John B said, “that you and Sarah were thinking on exactly the same track.”

“Great minds,” Sarah said, swapping a look with Kie. 

But once JJ gave in and lifted his hands, she gasped. She caught his palms, wincing. “Your right always takes the worst of it.” She lifted his right so she could examine it, muttering, “Swear we’re going to have to spray them with truck bedliner to keep skin on your knuckles.” She checked his face, her thumb skimming down his cheekbone. Finding no damage, she ducked her head, grabbing the hem of his shirt and lifting it to check his ribs. He caught her hand and pushed it back down. 

“Hey, if you’re going to rip my clothes off, Kie, wait until the others leave.” 

“You wish. Quit flexing your puny abs.” She swatted at him, gestured for him to turn around. He did, amusement growing, and humored her. 

“How’s the view from the back?”

She already had his shirt up, checking for bruises. “Surprisingly good. Must have been a slaughter at the Boneyard. You don’t have a mark on you, for once.” 

“I was in a mood,” he said darkly, then smirked. “So do I get _my_ kiss now?”

“You wish. Violence is not the answer, JJ.” She grabbed his wrist and tugged him to the kitchen, her oversize basketball shorts swishing at her knees.

“I’m fine, _Mom_.” He struggled half-heartedly but didn’t pull his hand out of hers. “Sarah already dumped battery acid all over my hands last night in the name of first aid. Florence Nightingale, that chick’s not.”

“I heard that,” Sarah called from the other room. “You're welcome when you don’t contract gangrene because of me.”

Kie was digging in the freezer, her other hand still locked around JJ’s wrist. 

“Where are the frozen peas? What am I supposed to ice all you idiots with now?”

“JJ got the munchies last weekend and ate them,” John B called.

“Jesus, not even vegetables are safe from you animals.” She snatched a Coors out of the fridge. “You’re going to have to ice your hand with a beer.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” He popped the top and took a long swig. She blanched at the smell, grabbing her stomach.

“Whoa, smell of beer…it’s gonna be a while before I want one of those again.” 

He stopped drinking and slung her a sad look that hurt almost as much as her stomach did right now. She turned to the other room, catching Sarah’s eyes where she had her messy sleep-haired head hooked over John B’s shoulder. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” She nodded toward the porch. 

Kie walked outside and her steps hitched as she caught sight of her shorts, tank top and underwear hung over the porch rail next to a pair of JJ’s worn shorts and the tee shirt he was wearing last night. The one he’d had for enough years that it was tight in the shoulders and made her think uncomfortable thoughts. 

She stared at the clothes, but spoke to Sarah. “Are they lying? About if the guy…well if it went farther than he said.” She paused. “You don’t know how well JJ can lie, when he wants to. He had Pope convinced once that he had died and was in the afterlife. If they thought I’d be better off not knowing what that guy did to me…” She didn’t look at Sarah but she kept her voice flat. Swiped once at her eyes. Then again. 

Sarah took her shoulders. “Maybe JJ can lie, but Pope and John B can’t. You were okay, Kie. I promise. They were planning to lie to you about the pee thing, and you see how long that lasted.” She steered her further from the house until they were under the dappled shade of John B’s big oak tree.

The spots of sun were warm against the cotton of JJ’s Pelican Marina shirt, too baggy around her body. Kie hugged herself around the middle, drawing it taut like it was some inadequate type of embrace. 

“They were such a mess when I showed up last night,” Sarah said. “I though JJ was going to actually _bite_ me when I told him he had to leave the room. They tried to change your clothes themselves, all with their eyes closed and somehow trying to wrestle you out of your shorts blind. By the time I got there, they were all—”

She made a bug-eyed face and Kie laughed.

Sarah touched Kie’s arm. “You’re lucky, you know. If I push people away, it’s because I know nobody would ever love me like that,” Sarah said matter-of-factly. “Not if they knew me as well as those guys know you. When I showed up, JJ was totally covered in your pee, and he didn’t even notice. He had your head on his leg and then when I made him leave, he put your head on a pillow all like…” Sarah rolled her eyes, looked away. “Anyway, it was sweet.”

Kie swallowed, feeling a little bad and not sure why. She jumped to say, “John B would be covered in pee for you. And bees and poison oak and anything else. Hell, your ex has already nearly killed him twice and he just keeps coming back for more.”

“Well, John B’s half crazy.”

“True enough.”

Kie paused, squinted out at the rising sun over the sea, hugged her arms over her still-queasy stomach. She was trying not to think about everything that might have happened if she didn’t have the Pogues.

“Okay. Alright.” Kie coughed out a big breath and waved her hands in front of her watering eyes, trying to dry them. “God. I can’t go back in there if I look like I’ve been crying. The boys’ll get all awkward like a whole room full of elbows, oh my god, it’s terrible.”

“Take all the time you want,” Sarah urged. “I’ve got Visine in the car. And mascara—sometimes looking good is the best disguise there is.”

Kie snorted, flapping the front of JJ’s shirt. “In that case, I’ve got no disguise at all.” Her smile faded quickly. “Was _JJ_ really taking care of me last night?”

“Like he was a mama wolf and you were his only cub,” Sarah confirmed. “But I mean, they all were taking care of you. It’s just JJ was the one who was…” She hesitated, appearing to search for the right word. “Wrecked.”

Kie glanced down, picking at her cuticles. “Weird. He’s not usually the caretaker.” JJ was the first to do a lot of things: first to roll a joint, first to jump off a cliff to see if the water below was deep enough for the rest of them to jump. First to make a totally wild plan that required inhuman amounts of courage and was usually crazy enough to work, as long as they didn’t get caught, which of course they always did.

He was not the first to nurture, or fuss, or caretake. She stared back at the house, at their clothes swirled by the light breeze where they hung on the porch rail. 

“Kie,” Sarah started gently. “You know he—” 

“Don’t,” she cut her off. “Not today, please.” She swallowed. “Anyway, I’ve got to call my parents. I was supposed to be home by one, they’re probably freaking out.”

“I texted them from your phone, then mine, told them you were staying the night.”

“They probably heard there was a kegger at the Boneyard. Somebody will have been talking about it at the Wreck. They’ll never believe I just spontaneously went for a sleepover.”

“I told them the van broke down and you needed a ride home but I was too tired to drive to your side of the island.”

Kie looked back at her, a brow lifted. “Okay, that they might believe.” She sighed. “Good call, because I don’t think I can deal with them today. I feel like a wet sock that got left on the beach and stepped on. By a surfer with athlete’s foot.”

Sarah burst out laughing and pulled her into a side hug. “Well, it hasn’t damaged your sense of humor, anyway.”

Kie squeezed her back and then headed toward the Chateau, but Sarah caught her wrist. “If you need to talk,” she said, meeting her eyes. “I’m here. The Pogues are great, but there are just some things you can’t say to boys.”

“Yeah,” Kie said around the lump in her throat. And for a second, she thought maybe she did want to talk about it. But it felt a whole lot better to shrug one shoulder, like it didn’t even bother her enough for two. “Let’s get back inside before Pope chews off all his fingernails.”

She let the screen door on the porch bang so if they were talking about her, she wouldn’t have to hear what they said. She tested her clothes as she went by and they were dry, but somehow the idea of putting on the clothes she’d peed in didn’t appeal.

“I washed them,” Sarah offered and Kie smiled at her. “See? You’re already more useful than the boys. They probably would have just burned them.”

“Poured beer on them, actually.” Sarah waved a hand. “Whole other story.” 

When Kie entered, the boys were still on the pullout and there were some ominous clashes coming from the kitchen. She flopped down on the bed next to them, wincing when the evil bar under the thin mattress whacked her kneecap. She avoided JJ’s eyes without entirely knowing why. Maybe because she didn’t have to look to know he was watching her, and today, that felt like it meant something.

Pope and John B paused in a bickering argument they’d had about four times already, about the items on Batman’s utility belt, and both looked at her. 

“Ugh, I feel like ass,” she said. “Low key Pogue day?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Next up, a low-key Pogue Day (plus Sarah!) and somebody’s getting their kiss, but I’m not saying who…


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Low-Key Pogue Day**

Kie looked around at the boys, hoping they wouldn’t make her go to a doctor, or worse, her parents.

“Sure, yes, of course,” Pope said. “Low key day.”

“Wanna get high?” JJ said, but she shook her head.

“I made you breakfast!” John B hollered from the kitchen, then swore.

JJ gave her a sympathetic look that said _Ouch,_ _John B’s cooking_ and she smacked him.

“At least he’s trying,” she whispered, then forced a smile when John B came out, carrying a bowl of soup full all the way to the brim. And burning his fingers all the way across the room, if the swearing was any indication. He finally made it to the side table, setting it down and sloshing soup over the edge. 

“Thanks, John B.” 

He waited, beaming. 

She hesitated, not wanting to say it. 

“Dude, she needs a spoon to eat soup,” JJ finally said.

“Oh, right right right.” He dashed off. The room was a bad mix of too much silence punctuated with too much clashing conversation all at once as Kie tried to eat her soup, which was scorching on the edges and cold in the middle because John B’s cooking skills ended somewhere short of knowing to stir things when you were microwaving them. It was a testament only to his utterly unpicky stomach and fishing prowess that he’d lasted this long as an orphan without starving to death.

When Pope started reciting stuff about trauma recovery that was obviously memorized from a Wikipedia page, Kie said she wanted to watch a movie, just to get them all to shut up and stop fussing over her. 

“Love, Actually?” she proposed, mostly to mess with them.

JJ scoffed. “John B loves that movie more than you do. He makes us watch that cue card scene over and over.” He rolled over and cupped Pope’s face sweetly. “To me, you are perfect.”

“So perfect...”

“I hate you both.”

“But you’re so perfect to us, John B.” JJ tried to climb over Pope to cup John B’s face and the ensuing scuffle got so energetic that Sarah had to break it up by grabbing John B’s ankle and hauling him straight off the bed.

“We should watch the Goonies,” he suggested, bouncing back to his feet and rubbing the elbow he’d banged in the fall. 

“Classic,” JJ said, raising his hand for an approving high five.

“Left hand, left hand!” Kie warned, but it was too late. John B slapped a crushing high five against JJ’s, both their right hands shredded from the fight last night. They broke apart, yelping as John B cradled his hand against his belly and danced around and JJ set his jaw, his eye twitching as he tried to look like it didn’t hurt.

Sarah sighed. “I’ll get my laptop from the car. Try not to injure yourselves in the four minutes I’m gone.”

John B’s DVD player had given it up last summer, and in order for them all to see Sarah’s laptop screen, they had to pile onto the pullout. JJ ended up on his side along the top of the mattress, with Kie’s head on his chest and the end of one of her tiny braids poking out of the corner of his mouth. She usually slapped him away and told him it was gross when he put her braids in his mouth, but secretly, she thought it was sweet. So today, she let him be. JJ’s top knee was bent and propped up, Pope asleep on his bottom leg. John B was on Kie’s other side, his big shoulder bolstering hers. Sarah sat on the floor, her head resting on his knee while she painted Kiara’s fingernails a bright, glittery yellow. 

Kie’s other hand was linked with JJ’s wounded right, keeping it tucked up under her chin with her already-painted nails cupped over the scrapes because he kept forgetting they were there, bumping them on things, and then bleeding on stuff when the scabs reopened.

Sarah finished painting her nails and Kie held it up over her head. “Blow.”

JJ blew on her nails, the familiar stream of air tickling her fingers. She hated the smell of nail polish—turned her stomach—but she loved the way it looked and nothing bothered JJ’s stomach, so this was their routine, since back in junior high. 

“Hey, you blow on command?” John B asked, the joke he always made when they did this.

“Buy me dinner first.”

Kie smiled, the familiar exchange filling her stomach in a way the half-hot, half-cold canned soup hadn’t touched. 

Sarah capped the nail polish but didn’t look back to the movie. John B glanced at her, then brushed the hair away from her face. 

“You okay?”

“We should report that guy,” Sarah said abruptly.

John B paused the movie, Pope blinked awake, and Sarah looked to Kie.

“Listen, I know you may not want to tell people what happened, but he’ll probably try it again with some other girl on the island.”

“He won’t,” John B said.

“Not at the Boneyard,” JJ said. “Not on the Cut.”

Sarah looked between them as if waiting for an explanation, but their voices were solid and they didn’t provide one.

“What, just because you beat him up? Hasn’t stopped the rest of the Kooks from all the shit they pull at the Boneyard.”

“No, because JJ pantsed him in front of everybody,” Pope said. 

Kie sat up. “Wait, what?”

“Threw his shorts in the ocean and left him rolling around bare-assed.” John B chuckled. “It was classic. Gonna be a legend around here.”

JJ didn’t laugh. “Everybody on the Cut knows him now, and what he did. He won’t show his face again.”

Sarah’s eyebrows were somewhere around her hairline.

“Told everybody that’s what we do with rapists in the Cut.” Pope held up his hand without looking and JJ hit up his fingers, “Wiggity wiggity wiggity!” he crowed, grinning proudly. 

“Why, JJ Maybank...” Sarah put up her hand for a high five. 

“Left hand, left hand!” Kie and John B yelled in unison. 

But it was too late again, and JJ sucked in a breath, jostling Kie’s head as he sat up to cradle his wounded hand into his chest. 

Kie and Sarah shared a look. “He never learns...”

After the Goonies, they turned on old episodes of Scooby Doo, which just made JJ grump about how they need to get a dog. 

“If you got a dog,” Pope said, “you’d have to remember to feed it when I’m at work, and so far, you and John B can’t even remember to feed each _other_ when I’m at work.”

JJ scoffed at this, and Kie diplomatically did not mention how many times she’s caught him making sandwiches out of free crackers and ketchup packets at the Wreck. She wished it was only once. She wished, really, that it was never. 

At some point during Scooby Doo, her back started to hurt and she wriggled until her and JJ had mostly switched places, Pope leaning on her knees and JJ’s head on her belly. 

When she started idly combing her fingers through his hair, he didn’t move. If anything, he leaned in a little to the touch. Her fingers tingled and she thought, _is this…_ but then he didn’t look up, and no one else seemed to think it was weird, or they would have made fun of them for it. So maybe it was just her and nothing had changed.

But JJ still didn’t move away, not even when she started braiding the longest parts of his bangs. By the end of the episode, he was sitting on the floor between her knees with both her and Sarah weaving his hair into tiny braids held with Kiara’s smallest rubber bands. It looked surprisingly good, making his blue eyes almost painfully vivid, his cheekbones sharp. 

When they ran out of hair to braid, he burrowed back up on the couch, shouldering between Pope and Kie until their bodies made a JJ-shaped space in between. 

Everything was sleepy and warm after that, the ceiling fan circling and the flies buzzing outside the torn screens. Nobody mentioned going home, or to work, or even fishing—not even Sarah, who was supposed to be grounded. At the end of every episode, John B would glance once at Kie, and start another one when it didn’t seem like she was ready to go anywhere yet. 

It was ten minutes into the seventh Scooby Doo episode when Kie’s face twisted, and she turned it into JJ’s belly, hiding her eyes. She didn’t make a sound, but when he inhaled, they all turned to stare. She knew her shoulders were shaking, knew they were watching and worrying and she wanted them to think she was fine, she did, but suddenly it was all way the fuck too much. 

JJ’s hand cupped her head and he curled down around her. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry, Kie.” She heard him swallow, his voice a little squeaky like it hadn’t gotten since it first changed, years ago. “Pogues are tough, see? Shit happens, it just bounces right off us. Doesn’t stick like it does for those Figure 8 pansies. We don’t even feel it.”

A smaller, softer hand started rubbing her back and Sarah’s voice snapped, “Don’t you tell her she can’t feel her feelings, JJ.”

“I keep trying to remember,” Kie gasped, the breath tasting like JJ’s shirt. “And it’s just black. Like nothing. And in all that blank I feel his hands all over me. I know nothing happened, but I just…” She broke off, pushing her face harder into JJ’s belly. His hand clenched on the back of her neck, holding her.

“We need to go surfing,” he decided. “On the board, you’re the boss.”

“Yup.” John B jumped up, stumbling over Sarah’s ankle as he swiped his keys off the side table.

“I’ll load the boards,” Pope volunteered.

Sarah handed Kie a tissue—probably from her purse because God knew the Pogues hadn’t bought Kleenex anytime this decade—and held her hand all the way to the beach. JJ was quiet, his jaw tighter than usual, his leg brushing Kie’s in the van, his shoulder bumping hers as they crossed the sand to the ocean. But his silence got a little lighter, she thought, when he glimpsed the sea.

An hour later, they were all salty and sweaty and Kie was smiling again. 

She dropped to straddle her board and catch her breath, bobbing in the waves near JJ while they watched the others ride the waves. “I do feel a little better,” she admitted.

“Does that mean I get my kiss?” he asked. “Right here, baby.” He tapped his cheekbone and she laughed at him. Those little braids…he looked way prettier than he had any right to, in the moment. She looked away. 

The next set of waves were perfect, but JJ didn’t make a move to paddle out to them. They bobbed there, quiet for a moment before she said, “You know, when John B kissed me, I didn’t want him to tell you.”

“Why not? He’s the one who crashed and burned, not you.”

“I thought you’d be mad.” She held her breath, her heart beating in her ears.

“Why? Because we’re soulmates?” He shot her finger guns, his eyes appearing electric blue without the constant flop of too-long hair to shade them. “Don’t worry, I’m not mad. I can wait for you to realize your undying love for me.”

“Be serious, JJ.” She rolled her eyes.

He splashed her. “You be serious. You told me it wasn’t my business who you kissed.”

“Because you punched them all.”

“Because they were shit compared to you.” He eyed the incoming set of waves and for a second, she thought he’d lost interest in the conversation. But he still didn’t paddle out to catch them, so she pressed him. 

“Who’s good enough, then? John B? Is that why you didn’t punch him?”

“Nobody.”

“JJ…”

He didn’t respond, and she ran a finger over her board, wishing her heart would stop beating so hard. Wondering why it was today, of all days that her eyes kept snagging on him and she couldn’t seem to let this go.

“Why didn’t you ever kiss me?” It felt like the whole ocean should go still to hear those words aloud, but JJ didn’t even blink.

He gave her a dirty look. “Don’t play, Kie. Not today. It’s not funny.” He rolled onto his stomach on the board and paddled away.

She watched him go, her mouth falling a little open. She glanced around, but the others were too far away to have heard. Still, her mood had soured on surfing, and she paddled toward shore instead.

Sarah was sunning herself on a towel, oversized sunglasses tipped down as she perused her phone. As Kie dragged herself out of the surf, Sarah said, “Hey, I’ve got to get going soon. I promised Weezie I’d watch a movie with her if she covered for me last night.”

“Can you put out the flames first?” Kie dropped her board and collapsed on the other side of the towel.

“What?”

“I just crashed and burned so hard I can’t believe you didn’t see it from here.”

“Oh?” Sarah pushed her sunglasses up onto her head. “I take it we’re not talking about surfing?”

“I asked JJ why he never kissed me, and he just swam away.”

“Whoa, you asked him? Just like that? And he swam _away_?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. He’s crazy about you.”

“Clearly not.” Kie’s shoulders slumped, and she tried to remember how she’d ever had the energy to hold her own body up. 

“It’s just bad timing because of last night.”

“Yes, please remind me how I peed on the guy last night.”

“Yeah, but even after you did, he had your head in his lap, looking at you like…well, like John B looks at me.”

“Like a starry-eyed, kind of dopey puppy? _JJ_? I think not.”

“You don’t see him when you’re not looking. My advice is, don’t throw in the towel so fast. You know how John B and I got together?”

“You went to Chapel Hill, to the rare books room or library or whatever. John B does like a good treasure hunt.”

“Yeah, but after, I tried to blow him off and he wouldn’t go for it. Went all in, shouting how it’d been the best day of his life, in front of everyone on the docks, even though I had a boyfriend at the time. He fought for me.” Sarah bumped her shoulder into Kie’s. “If you want JJ, go get him.”

Kie took a breath, then another one, wishing her stomach would steady. But despite the great big blank of last night, she didn’t feel like calling it a day and going home early. She didn’t feel like being the victim of anything, not even her own indecision. 

Instead, she slipped her ankle leash off, grabbed her board. She knew the tide here, her board would just wash right up without her. Sarah whistled approvingly as she dove back in and paddled hard to get all the way out to where JJ was. He was already gunning for a big one and she had to sprint to catch the same wave. She leapt to standing on her board, then turned sharply into it, leaning forward to gather speed as she shot right toward him. 

JJ caught sight of her and laughed, leaning harder to keep up with her. They’d battled for waves before, playing and jockeying, always backing off before they wiped each other out. This time when she crossed the invisible line of too close to maneuver, he glanced back, confused and mildly alarmed. She coiled her knees and jumped, tackling him full-body off his board and into the waves. 

They tumbled over and over, all tangled under the water as the wave rushed over them, then kicked back to the surface together.

She didn’t let go of his shoulders even when they broke the surface, treading water with legs alone as she leaned forward and kissed him, sea water salty between their lips. It was sweet, and too brief, and more familiar-feeling than it had any right to be. Kie was swallowed up with a sharp pang, like she was missing all the years they could have been doing this, that were lost now.

“I’m in love with you, you idiot!” she yelled over the crash of the surf. “Why didn’t you ever kiss me?”

He stopped moving in surprise. They both went under, then kicked back up. JJ surfaced already sputtering with his eyes wide. Then they had washed back in shallow enough he could touch bottom and he grabbed her, stealing one searing, shocked look before he ducked his head and went back in for more, kissing her until they were breathless. 

When she had to break the kiss for air, he hugged her hard, gulping air in huge breaths, shaking all the way down to his heels. She grabbed his hand and swam him closer to shore until _she_ could touch, then dragged him out of the waves, barely letting him reclaim his board. “Let’s get you out of here before you need CPR.” 

Instead, he yanked her back to him, wrapping his arms all the way around her so he could kiss her again, his dimples emerging this time as water dripped from his tiny braids. “Damn, Kie.”

She just grinned. 

Sarah was waiting for them on the beach, laughing. “That’s one way to go after your man.” She slapped Kie a high five. “I got it all on camera. You can show it to your grandkids.”

She took off to hang out with her sister, and then it was just Kie and JJ alone on the beach. Her heart was still pounding even as she turned to him. This was it. They were really real, this time. After all this time.

“Kie?” His voice came out soft, questioning, like he could sense the shift in her mood. He pulled back a little, his fingers starting to slip out of hers, but she didn’t let them go. 

“You said you wanted your kiss.” She pushed up on her toes and planted a gentle one right on his cheekbone. “I guess you earned it, after all.”

* * *

**The End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Agh! I can’t believe this is already over! But I’ve already got a long Outer Banks fic going and I can’t over-commit. If you want to see more romantic/friendship goodness with this group of weirdos, you’re welcome to pop over and try that one. It’s called “If Only The Gold.”


End file.
